Valley of Decision (15 page)

‘Will it lead anywhere?'

‘Commercially? Mary didn't think so, though Red Gage is going to be a somebody. They still haven't quite got the itinerary settled, and it is possible that the schedule will be extended for another period. But that will be that, it seems. I mean, the fund is still there, and there'll be something next year, and they all said they must have Mary back, but you know what some of these theatrical people are like.'

Joan had been surprised by the strength of the performance, and suggested that if anybody knew his way about the operatic circuit, he could make something of this production and certainly of Mary's talent.

‘But it won't happen?'

‘Mary thinks not. It's only in films that the great impresario's car breaks down outside the barn where the heroine . . .' Joan broke off to laugh. ‘They're all working five, ten years ahead.'

‘And not looking for replacements?'

‘Yes. But from their own contacts. This is a new, fringe thing. If it's as good for the next two years, somebody'll take notice.'

‘And Liz Falconer's appearance?'

‘Not mentioned.'

Mary had appeared well, as far as she could make out, but tired, perhaps. Joan fumbled round with her words, unforthcoming, evasive.

‘Are you all right?' he asked.

‘Yes. We only arrived back about four. We spent the night at the airport hotel and I didn't sleep well. Are you busy? Can you come round? Your father's out. He's had to see Timothy Langham about something.'

He agreed, though it meant another late night's marking. He listened now to his mother's account of Mary's voice, which had enriched itself beyond all telling. Joan seemed glad to rhapsodize. David promised to appear at eight o'clock.

His father answered the door.

‘I thought you were out.'

‘You know what thought did. And anybody would think from your face that you're not pleased to see me back.' Horace led the way, grimly smiling at his wordplay.

Joan sat at her writing desk, dressed as if to continue the expensive formality of the American outings. She closed a folder, ordered her husband to pour David a cup of freshly made coffee, began to answer questions with voluble zest. Again, Mary had been marvellous, the production outstanding; everyone in university circles talked of nothing else.

‘It's not the sort of thing you'd expect for a spectacular success. They all said it was a dressed-up secular oratorio where people sang pretty arias like ‘O Sleep, why dost thou leave me?' or ‘Where'er you walk', but it's nothing of the kind. It's dramatic.' Joan attempted explanations three or four times, but broke off without convincing herself. It had been magnificently sung and the direction had enhanced this musical excellence, but then she found it entrancing, magic intervened, the marmoreal pulsated as living, godlike flesh. Joan's speed but hesitancy of delivery went some way to excuse the extravagance of her metaphors; she had seen and heard what she had not expected. Moreover, the miracle had been repeated.

David listened to his mother with interest; he had never regarded her as volatile; her sensibility pursued, verbally at least, its middle way. Now she launched herself into this new style of communication, not without difficulty, and the change intrigued her son, who plied her hard with questions.

The conductor was good, a perfect ear, Mary claimed, but the presiding genius was this Redvers, Red Gage, the marvel, the leaper over high hedges. He was astounding, clever, he'd been a don at Harvard, but the life there was too flat and he'd taken to the theatre. First he'd written a play,
Jehovah's Witness
, which had had considerable commercial success, still had, then he'd directed Tennessee Williams, Albee, Stoppard, Ibsen, Büchner, Frisch and had laid claim to large mastership with his Brecht. David vaguely remembered encomia in the Sunday columns about this American
Threepenny Opera
which had convinced critics they'd neither seen nor heard the piece before. He'd set up
Mother Courage
on the West Coast, attracting the film and television moguls, was to direct
Tosca
and
Lulu
in two years' time at the Metropolitan, and had taken these three weeks off on
Semele
as a working holiday. ‘I guess,' he'd told Joan, in his quiet voice, which dodged behind you so that you looked over your shoulder to see who else was speaking to you as you were held by the great, watery eyes, the delicate beaky nose, the nicotine-stained lips, ‘I always wanted to impress academics. I couldn't do it with scholarship. Or not quickly enough. I'm a restless spirit. So I do it this way. God help me and the devil take them.'

‘How old's this paragon?' David asked.

‘Thirties.'

‘And he's impressive.'

‘He's a genius.' No mistake. Joan described the dark velvet jacket, the subfusc trousers, boots, the sober cravat, the pale, dry skin, his thinning black curls brushed and flattened but not quite covering a colourless pate, the high cold forehead over the violet eyes, the mouth adrift with new truths.

‘What's Mary say about him?'

‘Didn't take to him at first. He smokes. But he was always kind to her, she thought, but quiet, not assertive enough. He was making his mind up, she thinks, deciding how her qualities could be employed, or changed. But once he'd decided and rehearsals started, he assaulted the cast. He's frightening. His standards are sky-high. He'd go raving wild at the conductor, and he's no nonentity, over a few bars of introduction.'

‘Didn't this put them at loggerheads?'

‘Fenster crumbled', she said. ‘He'd met his match. Red can be satanic. And yet he speaks so quietly. He's striking to look at, well, at second glance, but he doesn't rail. But if once you get across some principle, he's a tiger. His face sets.'

Joan attempted to explain, not successfully, why the opera gripped with dramatic power. It was as if the essence of Handel's music had been transfused into formalized action so that the one sharpened, deepened the other. The listener was embroiled, musically. The original code had been broken, or employed contemporaneously for the first time, shatteringly. Yes, they decorated repeats. No, they did not use authentic instruments or pitch, but Fenster obviously had studied eighteenth-century techniques.

While his wife enthused, Horace sat with pinched lips, intervening once in the half-hour to ask for more coffee. He did not support her account, and his prim mouth suggested reservations.

‘And Mary herself?' David asked. ‘How did she seem?' His mother had already told him that the girl said she was well.

‘Ah, that's it,' Horace snapped.

David jerked his head; the unexpected remark struck abruptly for all its dryness. His father's lips were wet, red, his mouth slightly open under the bristle of moustache. Silence met, spoilt the tick of the coffee-heater, the creak of woodwork, a sniffle of draught; three human beings sat motionless, the mother with chin to chest.

‘What do you mean?' David forced himself to clothe anxiety with the humdrum.

They did not answer, but Horace twisted in his chair.

‘Are you saying, then, that she isn't very well?'

Again, nothing. His father rapped the arm of his leather chair with a tattoo from the middle finger.

Joan spoke first, having blown breath out.

‘We've talked about this,' she said, and stopped. Her eyes were wide; she was a different woman from the one who had struggled to express Handel's genius. Before, conviction underlay her hesitation; like a mystic she had lacked exactitude of words, not experience. Now she was about to fumble again, but without trust in herself. ‘I don't know whether we ought to mention it. It may be us.' She looked across at Horace, who avoided the glance.

David waited, not shortly.

‘She didn't seem pleased to see us,' Joan said at length.

All looked glum.

‘We saw her on the Tuesday night after the performance. She was tired, then. We didn't stay too long, but we took her to lunch on Wednesday, and we spent three hours with her. On Thursday, the fifth performance was that night, our second, she came to the Feinsteins' for a meal, stayed a part of the afternoon. We didn't see her that night, but called in on her just before we left on Friday.' Joan stopped again.

‘And?'

‘I've talked to your father about this. We both had come to the conclusion that she wasn't pleased to see us.' Again the agony of search. ‘I think I know Mary pretty well now. We used to talk a lot when she came up here to practise. She's had this great success. And it's in a strange place, with different habits and faces . . . Everybody's making a tremendous fuss of her, and rightly. She's being invited out here and there and everywhere. But she's a modest sort of girl. It won't turn her head.'

‘Did she seem ill?' David had had enough of his mother's indirection.

‘No. Not at all. She looked well. But we asked her about this. She felt a bit off in the morning, that's all. It was as if she resented our coming.'

‘Wouldn't she talk to you?'

‘Not easily. As if she'd forgotten all about you, and this house, and yours. I mean, I'm not saying she didn't ask any questions. She did. But she wasn't very interested in the answers. It didn't seem like her at all. I mean, she wasn't rude, or anything like that. If she'd had some terrible accident, or operation, or trauma, I could have understood it. She'd not lost trace of her life here, or us, or you, but it didn't concern her.'

‘She'd be concentrated on the opera,' David objected.

‘Well, yes. I can see that, but . . .'

‘Nothing like that at all,' Horace interrupted.

‘Of course she was interested in her work; we expected to find that.'

Horace drew in a lungful of breath, noisily, as a prologue, an announcement that he was about to speak.

‘She did not want us there. That's the long and short of it. It took her all her time to talk to us.'

‘She wasn't impolite,' Joan interrupted.

‘She didn't show us the door, certainly. But her mind wasn't on us. I remember my father telling us once,' Horace's voice warmed, ‘how he'd met some man, on a cruise, I think, he was a literary fellow, well known, a knight, a poet and magazine editor, something of the sort. They'd been very friendly, and this man pressed my dad to call in any time when he was in London. Well, he did. He phoned, was invited, but it didn't take him five minutes to see he wasn't wanted. He said the man wasn't busy, but he could hardly bring himself to remember the holiday. My dad had the photographs he'd taken, but he never got round to showing them. He upped and out. This man wasn't rude, but his interest in the holidays and the Blackwalls was minimal. It was embarrassing. My dad, well, you remember your granddad, wasn't exactly gushing, but he must have liked this chap or been impressed to have bothered to go round, and then, pooh, nothing. I've never forgotten him telling us this. It didn't exactly upset him, and he knew better than most that time's valuable, that if you're preoccupied or hard at work you don't want idiots in with their holiday snaps. This was different. And it embarrassed Dad, as Mary embarrassed us.'

Joan nodded. The anecdote had evidently already been tried out on her.

‘We're not psychic, you know.' His mother trundled her hands apologetically in the air. ‘Or at least your father's not.'

‘Was she worrying about something?'

‘She didn't say so. It was hard to pin down. We thought we might be at fault, that we'd got off on the wrong foot, and not recovered.'

‘I don't understand you.'

‘I'm not surprised. The nearest I can describe it, David, is this. It was as though we'd, we'd met her once in England, casually, after a performance, casually, I mean that, and then tried to presume on the acquaintance. She was preoccupied, and tired, I dare say, but she hardly asked us a thing, and sometimes didn't listen. It was hard work, I can tell you.'

‘She gave me a kiss the first time we met,' Horace said, ‘but you know how she used to pull my leg a bit. There was none of that. She didn't seem to want to talk about you, or music, or anything else. I couldn't understand it.' His father coughed his quandary away. ‘Give him another cup, Joan.'

‘I don't know what to make of it.' David, truculent, about to blame.

‘We thought hard and long about this, David. We didn't know whether we ought to say anything. I wondered if it was me, until your dad asked, “What's gone wrong with Mary?” It may be nothing. The opera or a quarrel, a bad period. We saw it would worry you if we did come running back with tales. We didn't know what to do for the best.'

His mother's face wrinkled with pain, doubt.

‘Has she been writing regularly?' Joan began again, tentatively.

‘I had two long letters about auditions and first rehearsals on the Monday you left. They'd been written, oh, a week and a half before. And on the Sunday, the night after the first performance, she telephoned.'

‘How did she seem?'

‘Much as I expected.'

‘That's good, then.'

‘She talked mostly about how the opera had gone, and she seemed pleased. I didn't notice anything out of the way. She said she hadn't felt very well, but she didn't make a song and dance about it. I thought, guessed, if you like, that she was excited, but that didn't surprise me.'

‘Well, that's not so bad, then, is it?' his mother asked. ‘Perhaps it's our fault. We went with the wrong idea. We'd forgotten she'd been away from home a month, and working herself to death.' Joan smiled broadly, sat comfortably.

‘Is that right?' David wheeled on his father.

‘Don't ask me. Probably.' Horace irascibly cleared his throat. ‘She didn't seem the same girl who'd left us here a month ago.'